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Friday, April 24, 2015

Happy Friday Friends!!! I know that I have been absent for a really long time.... I do apologize for that. I am thankful for the connections I have still been able to keep through twitter and instagram though! I needed to take some time to focus on life and school. It sure has been a very hectic year with getting back to work after having a baby (who is one now!!!yikes!!) and selling our house.... moving in with my parents and have had almost everything go wrong in the last 5 months to move on to a new adventure. I'm happy to say that school in winding down, after a fabulous year and a wonderful group of students. I have a lot to share from what we did and I have a lot of great news in terms of our future--- we're building a house! I'm linking up for one of my favorite linkys today.... Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs teaching to give you a little look into what I've been doing this week, and maybe a little from last week.... it's been so long since I've blogged I have so much I want to share!! Enjoy!

I've been plugging away on fractions with my kiddos. We're using math expressions, anyone else? I missed this part of the year last year b/c of being on maternity leave so it's been a little scary for me! However, I have to say that it's been going very well. My team is amazing and I've also teamed up with our ESL teacher, math interventionist and another teammate to do some team teaching and small group work with fractions. My kids are doing well, but let me tell you, it's hard! I'd love to know some of your suggestions for resources for fractions. We've been doing a lot of hands on activities. I've found that to be best, but I'm always on the lookout for more!

We end the school year with a great project in 3rd grade. I talked about it last year here. We do a pioneer simulation where students are assigned to an identity and a group and they 'travel the trail' west. We have a heavy emphasis on non-fiction reading and learning for 4th quarter and this fits perfectly with it. One of my favorite activities is this interactive word wall. We've done a lot with words and parts of speech this year, so it was a great activity to familiarize students with some of the pioneer vocabulary. I love using vocabulary boxes with them as well. It really helps them understand the words.

Speaking of pioneers, we have changed up our teaching of it this year and have added some STEM activities to go along with our learning. It's been wonderful. I will do a longer post when I have time, but here is a look at what we had to do this last week. Students had a limited amount of time and resources to create a shelter for their pioneers to protect them from a coming storm. I was very impressed with their creativity and teamwork.

We're doing a school wide writing project this year at school. It's been going amazing and also everything can't get enough of it. We're all making cardboard books or cartoneras and publishing them for a celebration at the end of the year. The process has been amazing. I'll share more at a later post, but wanted to let you know in case you wanted to get involved. You can check out more from my co-worker's blog Books Del Sur here!

We did a twitter challenge at school this week. It was amazing. I got to step outside of my box and do some things like a twitter chat, selfie with my co-workers and share ideas to those that I don't know. It got people on twitter that didn't know much about it and it also got us collaborating from across the halls. We always do a great job with collaboration but this was a different way! It was so fun. If you want to know more let me know. My coworker Jennifer set it up for us! She blogs at Mrs. Laffin's Laughings and also be sure to follow her link to her writing blog! Are you on twitter? I'd love to connect with you. I can be found @MrsBentin3